Why CDSN

 

The problem

Staffing Crisis and Lack of Training Supports
California’s current system for providing services for people with developmental disabilities is in crisis.  Low wages and other poor employment conditions for direct-support workers has led to very high vacancy and turnover rates, undermining the quality and availability of services.

Despite the growth of the most consumer-directed services, such as independent and supported living, California has not invested in the training and education of the workers providing those services. Smaller agencies and the direct hiring of workers by families, while excellent in responding to individualized needs, also make it difficult to provide other basic supports for workers-such as health insurance and other benefits.

A Solution

The CDSN is based on a common small business approach to reducing administrative and HR costs by outsourcing to a separate entity.   Such a separate entity pools together the resources of participating agencies, and can create the infrastructure to improve wages, benefits, training, and career opportunities for direct service workers. The result is reduction in worker turnover, which leads to improvements in the quality of services to consumers.

The CDSN assists agencies in recruiting and training workers, working with client agencies to  design and implement a training, education, and career ladder program for workers in participating agencies. In addition, CDSN carries out payroll, tax compliance, and human resources administration, using advanced technology and information systems to lower costs and improve agencies’ capacity to track key information about their work force.

The CDSN is designed to help solve a number of problems faced by the community developmental services system. Other CDSN solutions including:

• Improving worker recruitment through a recruitment web-site, and complementary activities to expand the pool of qualified applicants for client agencies;
• Designing and implementing state-of-the-art training options for client agencies to help set higher standards and develop the methods for direct support training.
• Attracting public training funds by developing multi-agency training initiatives.
• Expanding opportunities for career advancement to retain dedicated workers;
• Improving record-keeping to ensure compliance with federal requirements, and for better documentation of key measures of quality and workforce stability.
• Providing key start-up business services to facilitate the development and operation of new agencies